Tom Waits trisa com Orphans, subtitulado Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards. Três discos que se organizam segundo outras tantas ideias fortes, material lá de casa, sobras de antigos projectos, outtakes e coisas várias. Se no primeiro disco prevalecem os blues, stomp e seus derivados, como Mule Variations, e no segundo Waits dá voz ao seu lado mais melancólico e sonhador, um regresso às origens de Closing Time; no terceiro puxa para as tonalidades bizarras e experimentais de Swordfish Trombones. Ao todo, 54 canções, umas já vistas e agora revistas, outras, a maioria, inéditas; algumas retiradas dos trabalhos que Tom Waits tem feito para teatro e cinema, as sobrantes, reinterpretações do songbook doutra gente desvairada, como Daniel Johnston, Kurt Weill, Leadbelly, Kerouac, Bukowski e os Ramones.

When I was small I always thought that songwriters sat alone at upright pianos in cramped smoky little rooms with a bottle and an ashtray and everything came in the window blew through them and came out of the piano as a song…and in a weird way that is exactly what happens. What’s Orphans? I don’t know. Orphans is a dead end kid driving a coffin with big tires across the Ohio River wearing welding goggles and a wife beater with a lit firecracker in his ear. At the center of this record is my voice. I try my best to chug, stomp, weep, whisper, moan, wheeze, scat, blurt, rage, whine, and seduce. With my voice, I can sound like a girl, the boogieman, a Theremin, a cherry bomb, a clown, a doctor, a murderer…I can be tribal. Ironic. Or disturbed. My voice is really my instrument. - Tom Waits

posted by eduardo chagas @ 18.11.06